Watsham noted that he'd like this enhanced remake to run at 60fps - even with the 3D on - and will feature an improved save system. "The save spots in the US version is abysmal," he laughed, before noting that the European version had a checkpoint system prior to each boss. Even this Watsham felt wasn't quite the ideal solution, so expect that to be tweaked.

When THQ when kaput last year its assets were auctioned off to the highest bidder with Darksiders and Red Faction sold to Nordic Games. Now the Vienna-based publisher has acquired another one of THQ's lost properties with the whimsical platforming series de Blob.

"de Blob is just a great and truly unique franchise," said Nordic Games' business & product development director Reinhard Pollice. "We are excited about what the future holds for this polychromatic extravaganza as the newest addition to our portfolio. We will evaluate opportunities with the existing games, as well as potential sequels."

Citizens of Marin County, California can turn in their violent video games to the local government in exchange for ice cream.

Ben & Jerry's ice cream, to be exact.

As reported by the Marin Independent Journal, this is part of a new initiative by Marin County district attorney Ed Berberian. Berberian joined forces with Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream along with the Center for Domestic Peace to set up a drive in which locals can turn in both video games and toy guns to receive some sweet, sweet dairy treats.

Final Fantasy 4 has made its PC debut today on Steam, where it costs £10.99 / $15.99.

This isn't the FF4 of the SNES era, however, but the 3D remake that launched on the original DS in 2007 before later being ported to iOS and Android.

Eurogamer contributor Simon Parkin liked this remake when it hit European shores six years ago. "It's a respectful and assured update and that freshens an aged experience for a modern audience," he wrote in his Final Fantasy 4 remake review.

Many considered Patrick Stewart's classy response to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge the video to end all Ice Bucket Challenge videos, but the games industry still has some unfinished business with the fundraiser to cure Lou Gerhig's Disease.

The rule was simple: Anyone at Nintendo of America who donated towards the ALS Association got a raffle ticket to execute the dunking of their bosses. As you can see, many relished in making it a slow, painful process.

Debuting on 9th July 1981 in arcades, Donkey Kong was one of Shigeru Miyamoto's first creations and marks the first appearance of video game's most ubiquitous mascot, Mario - though at the time he was known only as Jumpman.

While Mario stole Donkey Kong's thunder, the big ape didn't go down lightly. According to Jörg Ziesak's 2009 book, Wii Innovate - How Nintendo Created a New Market Through Strategic Innovation, Donkey Kong cabinets earned Nintendo $180 million dollars in its first two years. That's the equivalent of over $650 million today. (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

The World Ends with You: Solo Remix - the mobile port of Square-Enix's quirky, futuristic DS action-RPG from 2008 - has finally launched on Android.

As is often the case with Square-Enix mobile ports, it's not cheap at $17.99 (about £11). The good news is that the iOS version - which launched in 2012 - received raving reviews, so ostensibly this Android port follows suit. Plus it features spruced up artwork to best take advantage of its HD display.

Eurogamer contributor Dan Whitehead called the original release "a truly brilliant game" in his The World Ends With You review. "It's bold, inspiring and bubbling over with dozens of ideas, any one of which would be cause for celebration in most games," he stated.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1683668Mon, 09 Jun 2014 12:50:00 +0100THQ sure left a lot of cool stuff in its former HQ

When Reddit user Soulessgingr's work relocated to a new building in Agoura Hills, California, he was delighted to see that it was actually the proverbial burial ground of former video game publisher THQ. Better yet, it still had a lot of cool memorabilia from the publisher's heyday.

Soulessgingr said he'd heard that all this paraphernalia was intentionally left behind as assets meant to make up for owed rent. "The building manager purchased all the stuff that was left and THQ also left some stuff (hardware mostly) because they owed a lot of money for back rent," the Reddit user said. He later added that another colleague verified that the building owner paid THQ for the sweet swag.

Aside from the cool, vaguely melancholy ambiance of working in a place haunted by totems of a once great video game publisher, Soulessgingr was given three of the left behind posters for Darksiders 2. "I was given Darksiders 2 posters a while ago because the CIO knew I loved that game when he did the initial tour," he explained. The lucky buck.

The director of Kirby: Triple Deluxe has explained why Nintendo's lovable pink rogue is often angrier in the West.

Box art for Kirby games usually shows the rotund character wearing a winning smile in his homeland of Japan. But the artwork is often changed for North America and Europe - here he has angry eyes and a scowl.

"For the Japanese versions we are, at [Kirby developer] HAL, involved in everything throughout development, including the package design," director Shinya Kumazaki told Gamespot. "The most powerful image of Kirby is that cute image, we think that's the one that appeals to the widest audience.

UPDATE #4 22/04/2014: 2K will be migrating the PC versions of Borderlands, Civilization 3 and Civilization 4 - along with their expansions - to Steamworks following GameSpy's multiplayer server shutdown.

The games will briefly go offline starting on 31st May while they make the transition.

Unfortunately, the PS3 versions of Borderlands and Civilization Revolution aren't so lucky. 2K said on its support page that it's "currently investigating the technical feasibility of transitioning those titles."

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1667674Tue, 22 Apr 2014 18:41:00 +0100Cave Story will finally reach the European 3DS eShop in May

Japanese indie adventure Cave Story has seen a lot of iterations over the years with relatively straight ports on WiiWare and DSiWare, a full 3D remake on 3DS, and a spruced up Steam release with extra content called Cave Story+. This final - and arguably definitive - rendition of Cave Story was released on 3DS in North America way back in October 2012, but its European version has been MIA for a year and a half. Now, publisher Nicalis has revealed on Twitter that the long delayed product will reach European shores on 1st May.

The publisher later noted that it will release pricing details next week.

When asked about an Australian release, Nicalis said that it had received a rating by the OFLC, Australia's rating board, and that it will eventually go to that territory at an unannounced time.

Professor Layton sips tea from fine china and has a keen interest in archaeology. He enjoys fencing, displays a natural talent for puzzle solving, keeps a studious yet approachable demeanour (Layton became a professor at the age of 27) and wears a top hat that outlines a nobly Victorian silhouette. He is, in summary, a blend of kindly clichés drawn from literature, Hollywood and echoes of bygone eras. He's a hopeful tourist's idea of an Englishman. And yet, over the course of the six video games in which he stars, Professor Layton has revealed himself to be a great deal more than the sum of his well-worn, if well-meaning, clichés.

Partly it's in the backstory, revealed in drips across the intertwining storylines of the games, in which the Professor and his 12-year-old public schoolboy sidekick Luke attempt to unpick a number of tangled mysteries. Here we learn that Layton's life was shaped by tragedy. Born Theodore Bronev, Layton and his elder brother were orphaned at a young age. His adoptive parents could only take on one of the two siblings. Before meeting the children they picked 'Hershel', Layton's older brother, on the adoption form. Hershel, wanting to look out for his younger brother, switched their names and gave Layton his place.

Later in life, the professor's partner Claire, whom he first met when the pair studied together at University, died in an explosion. It was Claire who gave Layton his top hat, an accessory he has worn to honour her memory ever since. It's a sad and involved backstory for a series built upon the kind of frivolous brainteasers usually found in the back pages of a newspaper, Moreover, it's an involved storyline for a character that was never meant to exist.

Published by Aksys Games, this mobile rendition of the cult DS hit, simply titled 999: The Novel, will eschew all the puzzles from the original game, so it can focus entirely on the plot and player decisions. Additionally, the art has been redone in a higher resolution and conversations have been reformatted so they're told via comic book-style dialogue bubbles rather than boxes of text ala an Ace Attorney game.

Excitingly, a flow chart is being added, so players can keep track of which narrative paths they've gone down. This should make it a lot easier to experiment with the story's numerous branching possibilities.

Brilliant Japanese role-player Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch has now shipped more than 1.1m copies worldwide, publisher has Namco Bandai announced.

Factor in sales of the DS version (shamefully only released in Japan) and franchise sales as a whole are now over 1.7m.

Those figures are copies of the game shipped to retailers rather than actually sold to gamers, but copies of the game remain difficult to find - suggesting that the actual sales total isn't far different.

UPDATE 07/02/2014 7.14pm: Renegade Kid has released the following Moon Chronicles debut trailer showing how this 3DS remake looks in action. It's definitely sharper than the original DS Moon, but there's no mistaking it for a current-gen affair. What do you make of it?

ORIGINAL STORY 24/01/2014 7.53pm: Mutant Mudds and Dementium developer Renegade Kid is remaking its 2009 DS first-person shooter Moon for 3DS as the episodic Moon Chronicles.

The Moon remake will be rebuilt from the ground up to support 60 fps, Circle Pad Pro, and enhanced geometry and graphics.

Call of Duty games are about to get even more lavish as its upcoming titles will get 50 per cent more time in development. That's right, the franchise is migrating to a three-year dev cycle with series stalwarts Infinity Ward and Treyarch being joined by Sledgehammer Games as the trio of devs who will take turns releasing CoD games.

Sledgehammer will premier its Call of Duty game in 2014.

The announcement was made during Activision's conference call today. "This will give our designers more time to envision and innovate for each title. Simultaneously, it will give our content creators more focus on DLC and micro-DLC which, as you know, have become large and high-margin opportunities and significant engagement drivers," said Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg. "Finally, it will give our teams more time to polish, helping ensure we deliver the best possible experience to our fans each and every time."

Nintendo DS games will be ported onto the Wii U's virtual console, Nintendo has announced.

The reveal just popped up on Nintendo Japan's site (via NintendoLife). The only picture demonstrating the conversion is an image of Brain Age where the GamePad screen is divided vertically to emulate the spine of the DS.

It may seem somewhat odd to port games from a dual-screen system onto another dual-screen system and only use one of the screens, but peeling one's eyes between the adjacent DS screens is a lot less cumbersome than looking back and forth between your lap and TV. Plus the dimensions of the Gamepad emulate those of a DS when turned on its side. It's unclear if all games will make this same sort of transition or if others will in fact use both screens. Perhaps all titles will come with an option for both? That would be pretty slick.

Enterprising 3DS owners have discovered an exploit that will disable the handheld's region-locking.

The 3DS is the first Nintendo handheld family to pose restrictions on all of its games from other regions - meaning that you can't import games from Japan or North America unless you also have a 3DS from the same region to play them on.

Happily, the method does not involve any tampering with the hardware itself - nor does it allow for the booting of pirated game ROMs.

The business of second-hand video games - pre-owned, trade-ins, used games, whatever you want to call it - is mysterious. Shops make millions while developers and publishers shake their fists in rage. Or do they?

Ben Grant and Matt Precious are "magicians that have come out of the magic circle", they tell me. They ran GAME and Gamestation's colossal, thousand-store trade-in and pre-owned business for more than a decade. They know their stuff. Now they're ready to share it.

Not for nothing, mind you. They're plugging their new business, Trade In Detectives, at the same time. But it's worth a look. It's a website that compares trade-in game prices - the kind of index Precious used to employ someone full-time at GAME to produce, and even then he could only keep up with a top 20. "We scrape and obtain around 110,000 prices per day," says Grant. "I wish it existed when I was at bloody GAME!" adds Precious.

It's a big day for Renegade Kid with both its first-person horror/action game Dementium 2 and its retro platformer Mutant Mudds receiving enhanced ports to new platforms.

The more exciting release for many will be Dementium 2 HD, the spruced up PC release of its 2010 DS spook-fest. Available on Steam for 25 per cent off until 2nd January (£8.99 / $11.25 rather than £11.99 / $14.99), this HD release features drastically improved lighting, character models, audio, and revamped controls that wouldn't have been possible with the DS's single D-pad.

EG-contributor Matt Edwards once wrote "Dementium 2 represents one of the better survival horror experiences on a system not known for its support of the genre," in his mildly favourable Dementium 2 review. Though he also noted that "it doesn't do enough to feel particularly inspired or original."

The gaming industry has wrapped up for Christmas and it's the familiar faces staking their claim for that coveted festive number-one spot.

In poll position, as always at this time of year, it's Call of Duty, according to the chart compiled by GfK Chart-Track. Last year's Christmas number-one was Black Ops 2.

Just behind Ghosts today is this year's FIFA game, then this year's Lego game, then this year's Battlefield game, then this year's Assassin's Creed game, then this year's Just Dance game, then this year's Need for Speed game and then, eventually, Grand Theft Auto 5, which comes around far less often. Will there be a cheeky discount to ram it up the festive pile in time for Christmas?

Every Sunday we haul an exciting article out of the Eurogamer archive so you can read it again or enjoy it for the first time if you missed it. Oli's look back at the Super Mario Bros. games was originally published on 15th November 2009.

"If he finds a warp, he can jump worlds!"

In the climactic scene of the 1989 film The Wizard, a withdrawn kid called Jimmy who's a preternaturally gifted videogame player is competing at a tournament. In the final, he has to play a game he's never played before: Super Mario Bros. 3, then unreleased in the US. For over five minutes of screen time, footage of the game looms large over a screaming audience while Jimmy's brother - suddenly possessed by the spirit of the back of the box - shouts tips and game features from the sidelines.

The Japanese studio had been developing Rune Factory 5 - the fate of which is now unclear.

Neverland's official site broke the bad news this week and claimed the development was due to "changes in the business environment" which had caused their financial status to "deteriorate considerably" (translated by Siliconera).

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1637341Fri, 29 Nov 2013 14:37:00 +0000Various US airlines now let you play games during takeoff

Virgin America has become the latest airline to allow passengers to play games during take-off, the company has announced. Other airlines that have recently granted this include: Delta, JetBlue, American Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways, Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and Southwest Airlines. (Thanks, Polygon.)

For the longest time using electronics during takeoff was considered a no-no in the world of commercial aviation as it was rumoured that personal electronics could conflict with the plane's equipment and passengers would find themselves stranded on a desert island talking to volleyballs and running from polar bears.

This nonsense came to an end last month when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) realised this was bunk and determined that people could play Pokemon without it endangering the lives of all those around them. Of course, bureaucracy has a drudgerous way of working, and airlines were tasked with proving to the FAA that their particular fleet is immune to the witchcraft of the mobile phone.

Bangai-O was once destined to be a generational cast-off. It was a quirky Dreamcast hit and an obscure N64 import around the same time, so it straddled two generations pretty easily. 2008's Bangai-O Spirits made sure Treasure's demented freeform puzzle-shooter would live through another. This was fabulous news when the game was announced, but even better news was that Bangai-O Spirits wasn't seeding its continuation by adding more content or updating the graphics. It did it by blowing its entire concept wide open, removing all traditional restrictions and shipping the game with a fabulous construction kit.

Treasure's output has always exemplified the fine line between genius and madness. Behind the lushness and splendid precision of Ikaruga lies an insane conjecture - the belief that a modern shmup can be a puzzle game, but remain a shmup while doing so. It's a crazed, obsessive vision of what game mechanics can be when taken to alien extremes. However, this ability to see further than its contemporaries and translate whatever madness it finds into ridiculously good games is what makes the Treasure magic sing so brightly. It's a unique perception of which game mechanics are beautiful and how they can be whisked up into engines of delight. This makes Ikaruga, as played by a master, one of videogaming's most beautiful performances. But Treasure's uncanny flair isn't always reserved for making the gaming equivalent of Faberge Eggs.

Bangai-O has always been a far messier and chaotic affair. There's a more gleeful, wanton insanity at the heart of the Bangai-O, which seems worlds apart from Ikaruga's crystalline obsession and purity. Instead of unfolding like a magnificent clockwork, Bangai-O is more a seething pit of systems and their agents colliding to see which fireworks explode first. The early originals tempered this with a fairly standard difficulty curve and a medium pace, where there's often time to rest. Levels are more like structured mazes, and the player shoots their way through one level after another. Of course, it has a story so deliberately mental that it serves as a savage critique on stories 'for' games, but Treasure's madness is kept well under restraint and channelled without breaking too many rules. Bangai-O Spirits, however, is a far wilder beast. It's Bangai-O with the safety off and the lid not so much unfastened, but ripped off and thrown away.

As the autumn heavyweights enter the ring it's Ubisoft setting the pace, as Assassin's Creed 4 leaps to the top of the UK charts, leaving EA and Battlefield 4 with a cut eyebrow in second.

Mind you, Assassin's Creed 4 has been out since Tuesday; Battlefield 4 launched on Friday.

Neither game, however, managed to match the launch figures of their predecessor, GfK Chart-Track pointed out. AC3 and BF3 are still the fastest-selling instalments in their respective series. Perhaps that's down to the impending arrival of Microsoft and Sony's new consoles, on which both AC4 and BF4 will be released.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1629595Mon, 04 Nov 2013 08:55:00 +0000Pokémon X and Y sales hit four million in two days

Nintendo has trumpeted a terrific two-day sales total for Pokémon X and Y: more than four million copies of the games were shifted over their opening weekend.

X and Y were the first titles in the series' history to get a global release across Europe, Japan and North America, but even combining past regional launch sales are still up on last year's DS sequels Black and White 2 by a factor of around 70 per cent.

But Nintendo will also be hoping that X and Y continue to sell in the weeks to come. Alongside today's news it compared the launch with total sales for the series' best-selling recent entries, such as DS incarnations Diamond and Pearl (17.63 million copies combined).

Before WayForward made the isometric multiplayer dungeon crawler, Silent Hill: Book of Memories, it had actually attempted to make a far more traditional Silent Hill adventure on DS.

This was back in 2006 before the studio worked on Contra 4. The developer didn't get beyond making a one-room prototype demo using the lead character and assets from Silent Hill 2, but you can get a vague feel for what it was going for by watching footage of this canned project on WayForward's Twitch video below (starts at about 5:30).

Next to my desk I keep an old pocket watch. It's not there for any practical reason; I sometimes wind it up, but more often I turn the cool oblong over in my hands, following the engraving on the case and marvelling at the inner workings. It keeps time perfectly, if required. But I keep it because it feels like treasure.

That sensation, a well-made thing that acquires an aura of magic, is something every developer would love to capture - yet how few do. Toronto's Capybara Games is one of the exceptions, having recently brought a little wonder back into adventure games with Sworcery (co-developed with Superbrothers), an offbeat follow-up to the studio's breakthrough titles Critter Crunch and Clash of Heroes. Capy is currently working on Super Time Force, which is Contra on (good) drugs, the awesome-looking Below (a timed exclusive for Xbox One), and another unannounced title. Their growth and projects are a shining example to other indie developers but getting here wasn't easy - and it involves a little grey DS cartridge that I consider a true treasure: Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes.

Capybara was founded in 2003, but the team were working in their spare time until, in autumn 2005, there was finally office space - and a whole bunch of licenses. "At the time I'd say 90 per cent of what we did was work for hire," says Nathan Vella, Capybara's co-founder and president. "Pre-smartphone cellphone games, so old crappy devices where games can only be 256kb, you couldn't press two buttons at once, things like that. We were making games for things like Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Happy Feet, Scarface, ESPN. It was pretty harsh. Quality was not necessarily a focus for these games whereas for us that was all that mattered. We wanted to make rad s**t."

In 2008 - before the crash - PopCap launched Bejeweled Twist with a party in the Sky Church at Seattle's Experience Music Project venue. Gymnasts played human match-three in the wonky, Gehry-rigged lintels, and waiters in retro-future Jetsons outfits wandered about serving cocktails. Earlier that day, I'd had a chat with the company founders back at their huge HQ just down the road. They'd shown me an early build of another new game, and it was one they seemed to be ever so slightly nervous about. A zombified spin on the tower defence genre, they knew it was clever, but they sensed it was potentially a little too hardcore, a little too niche to become another cash cow. Pre-lawyering, it was called Lawn of the Dead.

No worries, though, right? Whatever happened, they had a guaranteed million-seller on their hands, and another game that should at least go on to be an entertaining curio. Typically, as it happens, the PopCap founders were correct. Less typically, they had gotten the specifics muddled up. The tower defence offering was one simple name-change away from video game legend. Twist, meanwhile, would prove considerably more problematic.

Somewhere in my mind, I have Bejeweled Twist filed as a bit of a botch. It sold well enough, I gather, but I don't get the impression it connected with its audience as obviously as Bejeweled 2 had - and by the time Bejeweled 3 came along, the alterations that Twist made to the basic formula were nowhere to be seen. Crucially, I can't remember really playing Twist that much beyond a few turns at the EMP, so earlier this week I thought I'd give it another five minutes as a reminder of why I didn't like it, and then I'd get on with my life, an older and wiser engine.

Nintendo has decided to actually follow through on YouTube copyright infringement policies and is seeking ad revenue from user channels that feature Let's Play videos of the publisher's games.

"As part of our on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a YouTube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the YouTube database," said Nintendo in a statement to GameFront.

"For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on YouTube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property."

The second THQ auction has concluded with surprising results. We found out earlier today that Gearbox acquired the rights to Homeworld, but that's not the only jaw-dropping revelation. Vigil's beloved armageddon themed action/adventure series Darksiders was sold to Nordic Games, publisher of Alan Wake on PC, The Book of Unwritten Tales, and the later Painkiller titles.

For the handsome price of $4.9 million the Swedish publisher acquired not only Darksiders, but also Red Faction, MX vs ATV, Destroy all Humans!, Summoner, Marvel Super Hero Squad, Supreme Commander, and more that it's not yet revealed.

When asked for more info, Nordic's PR & marketing man Philipp Brock released the following statement: